Archetype

From the archive

The gang-of-four ready to take over the ant world. From left: Philip Ward, Seán Brady, Ted Schultz and Brian Fisher at the IUSSI congress in Sapporo, Japan.

It was at the XIV international meeting of the International Union for the Study of Social Insects in 2002 that the “gang of four” decided to join forces to reconstruct the phylogenetic history of ants using molecular data.  Four years later Brady et al. 2006 was published.

Tags: Brian Fisher, IUSSI, Philip Ward, Sean Brady, Ted Schultz

Homology Weekly: DNA

At any given position along their DNA sequences, ants may have any of the following four nucleic acid types: A, T, C or G. Unless we are dealing with the mitochondrial genome that is known to have quite a few A+T-rich regions in insects, in which case expect to find just those two types of nucleotides.

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Tags: DNA, Postmodernism

C’est très Fourmidable

Us working with ants just love to have plenty of databases and digital content available at a click of a button to assist in our malevolent plan to turn these vicious little creatures against humanity.

From Laurent Keller’s laboratory in Switzerland now comes Fourmidable, a web-accessible database for all things related to ant genomics. › Continue reading

Tags: Fourmidable, Genomics, Lasius niger, Laurent Keller, Solenopsis invicta